


Carcassonne

by TaFuilLiom



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-28 02:38:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17779001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaFuilLiom/pseuds/TaFuilLiom
Summary: Craning her neck, Maggie saw that the time on her watch was sneaking on. She let her head fall back onto the stiff pillow. She didn’t even know if time passed at the same rate on this Earth than on her own.She said she would be home by noon.Her flight is at 8.It’s almost 11.





	Carcassonne

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lurkz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lurkz/gifts).



> Happy Valentine's! Hope you enjoy!

Foam swirled on the surface of her coffee. Maggie chased it with her spoon, trying not to let it clink off the sides. She had left Alex sound asleep in their bed, and didn’t want to risk waking her.

The flight tickets were in the fruit bowl, tucked neatly away between the apples. After a modest honeymoon up the coast, they decided to wait a few months before taking a real foreign vacation.

The slide of her arms around Maggie’s waist was practically sublime. Her wife, a master of catching her unawares, had crept up behind her.

"Hey you," she said.

"Good morning, Mrs Danvers."

At the sleepy rasp of Alex’s voice and the curl of a smile against her ear, Maggie relaxed even further into her wife’s arms. She never challenged the title, not here in the sanctuary of their home.

Maggie sipped her coffee, and then said, "I’m so ready for our vacation."

Alex kissed the side of her head and then went to the hooked stand to get a mug for herself. "Well, we’ve got our packing done."

"Most of our packing done," Maggie corrected, pointing at the fridge. Pinned up by a Supergirl magnet was a short, frayed list of items they still needed to pack. Most of the items had a black line scrawled through them, but a handful remained.

Alex rolled her eyes, pouring her own coffee. She rounded the island again, butting her hip against Maggie’s. "One more day and then Carcassonne."

While they were flying out that night, Maggie had a few hours to spend at the precinct tidying up the mess left by an internal investigation gone awry. A false allegation against a colleague from another department had spiralled into an attempt to infiltrate SciDiv. Cases had gone missing, sensitive information leaked, and the department left reeling. Maggie had helped pick up the pieces and get things in order again, proposing new security measures and reducing the liability of people trying to access records. Still, as important as it was today was a headache she wanted to avoid.

So she murmured, "Carcassonne" into a kiss as if to push that dread away.

The place had become a prayer, a blessing between them. It became as much a part of their exchanges as goodbye and I love you. The promise of the French countryside was borne from Alex’s grandfather, who lost his older brother to the Second World War. He’d been too young to fight, but had been obsessed with the foreign lands where his brother lay. Their house was filled with sentiments from France, postcards tacked on walls, roaming pastures and coloured fields.

When they had been deciding where to go for their vacation, Alex had told Maggie about how she had been a girl, staring at these photographs in her grandfather’s house, and been drawn so deeply into them. The reminiscence of childhood wonder in Alex’s eyes as she told the story had made up Maggie’s mind for her.

"I can’t believe you gotta go to work with our flight tonight," Alex complained.

"Like I said. It’s just to get these loose ends tied up." Maggie swiped her badge and tucked it onto her belt, before stealing one last kiss. "I’ll be home by noon."

~

Maggie was almost done. The pile she had to check, mark and clear was dwindling to the final pages, and she could practically feel the static excitement of the airport departure lounge.

Her phone buzzed. She had a text from Officer Steir, asking for assistance. She frowned, unease prickling at the unconventional text. It wasn’t through official channels, and Officer Steir was on his way to becoming a detective, so he wasn’t exactly new and stuck.

She dialed his number.

_"Hey Sawyer."_

"Hey, Steir." She leaned back in her desk chair until it creaked. "Everything alright?"

_"Eh, well, here's the thing. Two rookies have been called out to their first SciDiv case."_

Maggie closed her eyes, already anticipating the purpose of the call. "Uh huh..."

_"They're refusing to touch the damn device."_

"Scared, huh?"

_"Stiff."_

"You think I need to call my wife?"

_"Eh,"_ Steir replied, _"Think that's your call when you get here."_

An experienced cop, that's what they needed. Someone to come in and hold their hand so that they wouldn't be screwing up on their first weeks out of the Academy.

"Great. Babysitting."

By the time she reaches the scene, she could see the short arm of her watch creeping towards ten and knew she was pushing it being here. Then again, she'd be damned if this was mishandled and escalated into Alex being called into work, or snowballed into a life-threatening situation. Often, SciDiv back-up calls were unpredictable.

She was ready to nip this in the bud here and now.

The frigid warehouse echoed with her footsteps as she pushed past the rookies to see what the issue was. At the sight of a tiny grey box in the centre of the cavernous space, she raised an eyebrow at Steir.

She propped her hands on her hips and turned to the two rookies. "What seems to be the problem here?"

The taller of the two took off his cap and wiped his forehead. "That box over there looks suspicious."

His partner nodded. "Could be a bomb."

Maggie bit the inside of her cheek. "Do you think this really required a SciDiv consult?"

"That's protocol, ma'am."

She raised her eyebrows even higher at the term. Then with a huff she started towards the box. As she got closer, she recognised the design of the blue glyphs around the edges, but struggled to remember where she knew them from. She crouched, inspecting it further, and made a noise in the back of her throat.

She took out her phone, ready to snap a picture and confer with her wife, but then the box began to hum. It was a low sound, building to a crescendo.

She didn’t have time to scramble back to her feet before the warehouse exploded in a blue light-

She was falling.

~

The burn of her eyelids being forced open, and then a blinding light; first her right, then her left. She flinched away, trying to blink herself back into reality as her stomach dipped.

"Ma’am, do you know where you are?"

Shapes first, spots flying around, and then she adjusted. Glass cabinets filled with vials, red bags with fluorescent stripes, laying on a high stretcher. The stench of antiseptic, the chipped shine of the interior panels. She was in the back of an ambulance. Two women in navy uniforms stared down at her, one she recognised right away.

"Alex?"

Alex smiled, nodding. She clicked off her pen light and slid it into her pocket, right above a name-badge. "That’s right Ma’am."

Maggie was fuzzy. She struggled to make sense of the scene. She glanced at the other woman, and then back to Alex. "What are you doing?"

"You got a bump to the head," Alex explained slowly, as if to a child. "Do you remember anything?"

Even underneath baby blue gloves, Maggie saw the absence of the engagement rings. There was no recognition in Alex’s eyes, no love either. Just concern for a patient. Maggie took in the navy paramedic’s uniform, pieced it together with the environment, and began the slow trickle realisation of what had happened to her.

"I need to get to the DEO," Maggie said, "I’ve fallen through one of those portal things."

Alex’s cheek twitched. The blonde paramedic looked skittish, glancing at her for guidance.

"A portal-?"

"I don't have time to explain," Maggie interjected, "I need to get back to my Earth."

With a gentle nod, the blonde sympathetically pawed at Maggie’s knee.  "It’s going to be okay. I’ll go and call Aunt Pat."

"No, I’m not-" Maggie bit her tongue halfway through her protest. She was aware of the connotations, of this euphemism. They were going to call ahead and make the hospital aware of a possible psych patient.

She took a deep breath to steady herself as the blonde paramedic hopped out and Alex secured the rear door behind her. Maggie watched her slowly turn and kneel down to unzip a red medical bag.

"Look, Alex, I’m not crazy, I-"

The paramedic lunged up and hovered the business end of a handgun an inch away from her nose.

"What do you know about the DEO?" Alex growled.

"Alex-"

" _How_ do you know about the DEO?"

The gun jammed against the cartilage of her nose, shooting pain through her skull. She struggled, but the confines of the stretcher and the pressure of the gun restricted her.

"Oh, shit! Fine, okay, I’m-"

"Are you trying to disrupt this undercover operation?" Alex interrupted. "How were you aware-"

"Special Agent Danvers," Maggie gritted, seeing the flash of surprise in Alex’s eyes. "Can you just let me talk?"

Alex’s jaw worked. "You have ten seconds to explain yourself."

Ten seconds, and this replica of her wife was going to blow her brains out over this stiff medical pillow. Rapid memory flickered through her mind; going to the crime scene, inspecting the device, the undulating blue portal.

She remembered the last time she had encountered something like it. She had gone to Earth 1 because Alex thought it was too sad if Kara went alone. Barry and Iris’ wedding had been attacked, and events melted into a dark nightmare. She had been sent to Earth X, had twisted her wrists against their bindings just to hold her wife’s hand as they waited to be delivered to their shallow graves.

And yet this was scarier, looking up at her wife’s image and seeing no love in her eyes.

Patchy at best, Maggie tried to explain the situation, hitching her hip to show off the badge on her hip. She described the crime scene, the portal, falling through and now her plight to get home.

"I’m not from here, you get that much," she concluded, "And I don’t know if you’re undercover or you’re DEO or not. I just really want to get home, please, Alex."

Alex narrowed her eyes, and then lowered her gun. Clearly assessing that Maggie wasn’t a danger to human life, she rocked back on her heels. Then she reached forward and stripped Maggie of her badge, rifling in her pockets and taking her identification and phone.

"I’ve got a gun, too."

Alex removed it without comment. Pliant and without fight, Maggie trusted her to take her weapon and unload it, and then remove her cuffs. With lightning precision, she clicked Maggie’s wrist into the cuffs and secured her to the metal railing of the ambulance bed.

"I’m taking you in," she said.

"And here I thought this was just for fun," Maggie drawled, clinking the cuffs.

Alex gave her a sour look before straightening and exiting onto the street outside.

Craning her neck, Maggie saw that the time on her watch was sneaking on. She let her head fall back onto the stiff pillow. She didn’t even know if time passed at the same rate on this Earth than on her own.

She said she would be home by noon.

Her flight is at 8.

It’s almost 11.

~

Being interrogated by Alex in a serious setting was gruelling, but revealing. She knew Alex’s tells, knew she was getting frustrated that there wasn’t something more sinister than a woman being lost in a world that wasn’t her own.

Eventually, J’onn confirmed who she was. She could see the hunch of them talking at the other end of the room, the glimpses Alex stole as they spoke. The agent was back in her DEO gear, and yet it felt as much as costume as the paramedic’s uniform had been.

A file landed in front of her. Then her gun, her badge, and her ID. But not her phone. She didn’t say anything as she clipped her badge back onto her belt. Alex remained standing, arms crossed over her chest.

"Your story checks out."

"I’m not an imposter. I’m just not from here." Maggie slipped her identification back in her jacket and then leaned back in her chair. "Why were you undercover in an ambulance anyway?"

Alex sighed. "Had reports of a purple creature stealing oxygen tanks from ambulances.

"Oh." She tapped at the desk, seeing J’onn approach. "Can you help me get home?"

Alex looked to J’onn for approval, who nodded gruffly. "Agent Schott is currently trying to trace the portal interference retroactively, try and figure out which Earth it is you’re from."

Maggie had been told when they were on Earth X. It had been explained to her. Yet there was a gap where that knowledge was.

But Winn would work it out. Maggie had every faith in him.

And being led out into the atrium, seeing him again, made her heart ache in the best way. She wanted to grip him in a fierce hug like the one she'd given him before he left with the Legion. But he didn't know her, not here anyway. So she didn't.

While he may not have recognised her, the red and blue arrival certainly did.

"Oh, I know you!" Kara said excitedly, striding towards the command centre. "You work with the NCPD. I've seen you at crime scenes."

Maggie waved at hand in her direction, making a point to Alex, who frowned. Winn butted in, poking his head up and flapping at his console.

After a ramble of technical talk she didn't understand, Maggie shook her head and stopped him in his tracks. "I don't care how you do it, I just need to get home."

"I get it," he said, jittering in that way he did when time was of the essence. "Something happening there?"

"I’m going on vacation. My wife is waiting for me."

(She pretended not to notice Alex's jerky reaction to the word _wife_.)

His keyboard tapped so rapidly Maggie was sure he had to be typing jibberish, but his face bloomed into a wide smile. "Well we gotta get you home, lady!"

Nosey and eager to see more of their visitor, Kara gravitated over. "Another Earth, huh?"

"Yup."

"How different is it there? Are there flying cars?"

Maggie smiled, entertaining the notion. "Not yet."

They spent the next few minutes making small talk. Maggie decided to allow some leniency, revealing that she was in fact friends with them all. Kara wanted to know as much as she could about her other self, disappointed that the differences seemed minimal.

She noticed that no matter what she said, Alex's eyes never left her. At first, the agent seemed to be supervising the interaction between Maggie and her sister, but as more anecdotes were shared, a curiosity seemed to grow too.

"I know you wanna get home as soon as but-" Winn clicked at something on his screen and then sighed, ruffling his hair. He looked sheepish. "This is gonna be a half hour at least."

"Okay." Maggie pushed off the desk she was leaning against. "I’ll go get you coffee. I know where the canteen is."

Gobsmacked by the generosity, Winn joked, "Can you visit more often?"

"Extra cream, right?"

Winn blinked. "No, please, visit more often."

As she made her way towards the elevator, Alex trotted after her, catching up. "You know so much about me."

Maggie stopped, trying to ease the confrontation. She held up her hands. "I told you, we’re friends."

"No." Alex made sure no one was eavesdropping, and then checked on the proximity of her sister, before saying, "You and Kara, I believe. Winn, J’onn even. But not us."

Alex wagged a finger between them in demonstration. Maggie tried to be cool, calm and collected. But she equally wanted to take the agent by the shoulders and rush her through weeks of realisation, coming out and dating to get to the sweet romance they had conjured.

"Why do you say that?" she asked.

"You know so much about me, specifically. All these little details." She rooted in her pocket and fished out Maggie's phone, finally handing it over. "Your lockscreen is a picture of me asleep."

Maggie didn't look at the phone as she slipped it into her jacket. "It’s a great angle."

"I’m asleep. I’m vulnerable. My guard is down." Alex blazed past, taking a step closer and rushing her words out as if they were burning her tongue. "It’s my apartment. My couch."

"It is."

"All these little details," she repeated, "Who am I to you?"

Anticipation crackled between them. She had watched how Winn and Alex launched over phones and tablets of suspects, accessing their files and private messages and blowing them up on the monitors for all to see. She knew that there was a whole folder on her phone dedicated to her wedding, filled with images of all of them.

Alex hadn't confiscated her rings when she was being processed, but she had lingered as if she was considering it. Now, Maggie suspected she was glad she didn't.

"I think you already know, Alex."

"The other Alex…" Alex furrowed her brow. " _She’s_ your wife?" She said it as if it was a foreign word, unfamiliar to her tongue.

Maggie wanted to be kind and put this poor woman out of her misery, just tell her the truth. But it equally wasn’t fair to not let this Alex figure it all out on her own. The wedding photographs would be her starting gun.

"My wife is intelligent, brave, beautiful, and kind," she said carefully, waving around. "She’s an agent here, on my Earth. It’s why I knew about the DEO."

Alex was left stunned at the step-around. "That doesn’t answer my question."

Maggie’s mouth twitched. It wasn’t quite a smile, because honestly she felt pity for this alternative woman in front of her. She ducked her chin and replied.

"Yes it does."

This time, Alex didn’t follow as she left.

~

When she returned with coffee for everyone, made as she knows they like it, she was treated to another battery of questions from Winn and Kara. But Alex was subdued, quietly watching. Her eyes were stormy, confused and helpless.

Kara bounced on her toes. "Where are you going on vacation?"

Maggie closed her eyes, remembering the travel website, the excitement in Alex’s eyes, the scored out list on the fridge. How her stomach hurt from laughing as she watched Alex trying to pack, just last night.

"The south of France."

"Oh, you’ve always wanted to go there, too." Kara nudged the somber Alex, who twitched at the statement.

Maggie gave them a half smile. "Who do you think chose it?"

By the time Winn announced the set up was ready, Maggie didn't get a chance for proper goodbyes. That charged snap overtook his speech, and she was enveloped in a blue light, falling again.

She landed with a grunt, flat on her back in the atrium. Except, with the gaping expressions of agents all around her, she could tell it was her own world.

Agent Riley peered over the top of her station. "Maggie?"

With a grimace, Maggie stood. She brushed herself off. "Hey."

Riley blinked, rounding her console as the rest of the agents trickled back to their duties. "Aren’t you supposed to be catching a flight later?"

"Yup."

As soon as her phone connected back to the aerials on her Earth, it buzzed with missed calls and other notifications. She text Officer Steir to reassure him that he could call off the NCPD mobilisation in search of her, and then dialled for Alex.

She glanced at her watch - almost 2pm now.

_"Babe, thank God,"_ Alex said. _"You okay? I had a missed call from your precinct."_

"I'll explain when I get back."

_"You said you’d be home by noon..."_

Maggie smirked, practically hearing the pout. "I know, I’m sorry."

_"You almost done?"_

"Almost. I’m gonna finish up and then come home."

_"Great."_ She heard Alex shuffling around in the background _. "Crazy day?"_

Maggie reached the sidewalk outside the DEO, and began to walk towards the precinct. The afternoon sun was warm on her neck, the breeze light and fresh. She thought of that poor Alex, and wondered if there was a woman who would come along and change her world for the better.

"You have no idea."

~

_**The next day, on the alternative Earth...** _

Another day, another operation. She was surprised when J’onn had presented her with the file. Usually she went weeks between undercover postings. This one, he said, was a menace that needed to be quashed immediately.

After the briefing, he quietly added that given the events that transpired yesterday, it was probably good that she get herself out and into a different headspace again.

Working as a janitor at _California Fitness_ was not the most glamorous undercover occupation she had ever held, but she lost herself in the manual work of it. She swept at the floor outside of the entrance to the main swimming area. The lobby had offshoots to gyms, recreational rooms and a variety of sport courts. People milled around, coming and going to various activities, and she kept a careful watch over anything suspicious as she navigated the teal tiles with her brush.

Yet her mind kept wandering to the mysterious woman who dropped through a portal. Who, apparently in another life, she was married to. She was gay in another life. She was-

Fixed on the increasingly panicked trail of thought, she failed to see a woman coming through swing doors to her right. They collided; but as she staggered back a step and prepared to apologise, she was struck by the brown eyes she now recognised.

"Maggie," she breathed, winded.

The woman blinked, hitching her yoga bag higher on her shoulder. Confusion marred her features. "Do I know you?"

"No, sorry." Alex waved her hand, cheeks reddening at the ridiculous  reaction. "Thought you were someone… I knew."

Alex straightened her brush, patting at the pile of crumbs she had gathered on the floor. Maggie hadn’t walked away. Instead, she offered the slow curl of a smile, and gestured at the door she had come through.

"My yoga class just got cancelled."

“Oh,” Alex replied, propping her brush up and aiming for casual while the turquoise reception area spun around her. "That sucks."

Again, she remained. Alex began to itch, not sure whether to pursue this beautiful coincidence or to turn back to what she was doing and let this opportunity go.

Maggie tilted her head, studying her. "You know, it’s weird but-"

A crash, and a deafening roar - the alien Alex had been waiting for. There was a sting of disappointment that her work would interfere with something that could change her life, but she heard the horrified screams of the swimming pool patrons and it made up her mind for her.

As much as it hurt her to ruin this chance, she thumbed behind her to the entrance to the pool.

"I gotta go," Alex said, picking up her brush. "Duty calls."

"Woah, hold on," Maggie said, gripping her elbow to stop her. "I don’t think so."

"I’m-" Alex thought about the ID badge tucked away inside the fleece pocket of her CF uniform, but thought better of it. "The pool cleaner."

Maggie unzipped the side pocket of her gym badge and produced a police badge. "I’m NCPD Science Division." Her concerned gaze fixed on Alex as she nodded behind them. "I think we both know that ain’t a job for a pool cleaner."

There was another thundering roar, and more people screeching through the doors behind them. Alex could hear the splashes of the pool, the wed slaps of feet running away, and it made up her mind.

She broke her broom over her knee, revealing its real purpose; an electrified double-baton from the DEO. Maggie’s eyes bugged at the dangerous, static hiss of it.

"I’m no ordinary pool cleaner," Alex said.

Maggie focused for a moment on the fizzling electricity of the weapon, and then shook her head. "We can argue about this later."

And so they charged off through the pool doors, together.

 


End file.
